In a rare ballet moment, the men onstage this weekend at Costa Rica's Melico Salazar Theater outnumbered the women – 39 to eight.

The Georgian National Ballet, despite its name, was not a leotards and tutus affair in the French “ballet” tradition. This troupe, instead, featured swords and shields, sheep's wool wigs, black capes, boots and long white bride's gowns.

And the grace required throughout many of the almost 20 dance pieces was less Mikhail Baryshnikov and more Michael Jordan or even “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.” These Georgians jumped high, and they kicked and spun relentlessly.

“You will have an impression what kind of country we have,” Khatia Ekizashvili, the troupe's English-speaking manager, told The Tico Times Friday, before the weekend's shows, on Saturday and Sunday. “The men which are brave and masculine, and the woman which is gentle and is floating on the stage, the respect the men have towards women – you will see this,” she said.

The crowd seemed more enthused by the brave than the gentle. While the men danced with athleticism, lending leaps and bounds to the spectacle, the woman seemed unenergetic by comparison.

Female dancers executed gentle glides across the stage by taking short, quick steps inside the floor-length skirts that hid their feet. Their arms sometimes stretched out branchlike.

This was contrasted by the frenetic movements of the “brave and masculine.” Within seconds of opening the curtain, some of the male dancers had formed human towers on each other's shoulders, while others spun their bodies, swept their legs and leapt higher and higher, only to bounce on their shins and knees – wearing camouflaged knee pads.

The costumes were a spectacle in themselves, particularly the glittery white gowns and unusual, sheep's wool wigs that Ekizashvili said are called papakhis and are worn by mountain men.

The manager said the costumes were designed by Solomon Virsaladze, friend of the company's founders, the Sukhishvili family, and costume designer of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater.

While several pieces brought men and women dancing together in courtship, others saw the men onstage alone, battling one another. They struck their swords and shields, causing sparks to fly and adding metallic percussion to the musical quartet that played at the back of the stage. The musicians played a drum, two accordions and an Eastern-sounding clarinet-like instrument.

Occasionally, men and women joined dancing in unison in a sort of jig-like River Dance of the Caucasus.

For anyone unfamiliar with the culture, it was hard to place it.

“Georgia is located at the border of Asia and Europe,” said Ekizashvili, “so in the culture we have a lot of mixtures of European and Asian cultures, but still, I wouldn't say that it's more European or Asian, it's something totally different.”